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OMG! Ubuntu! reports
[January 11,] the company announced the immediate availability of the Dell Precision 3520 mobile workstation (that's "professional laptop" to you and [me]).
Better yet, buyers can save over $100 by choosing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS pre-loaded instead of Windows 10--now that's what you call a deal!
[...] Dell's Barton George says more Ubuntu-powered Precision workstations will go on sale in the coming months, worldwide, including an Ubuntu version of the company's stylish new Precision 5720 All-in-One desktop PC.
Unlike other vendors, Dell [doesn't] ship their Linux option on no-frills reduced-power hardware. All models in the Dell Precision lineup pack powerful 7th generation Intel Core and Intel Xeon processors, support Thunderbolt 3 (ahem, USB-C), and can be kitted out with up to 32GB RAM!
The Dell Precision 3520 is available to buy & configure right now priced from $899 (base specs, with Ubuntu 1604 LTS). It ships worldwide.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Saturday January 14 2017, @12:57AM
I can think of a couple reasons, both related to a little more pragmatism toward proprietary software on Canonical's part: "open source" philosophy rather than the "software freedom" associated with distributions such as Debian and the more purist Trisquel.
Ubuntu makes it easier to find and install proprietary hardware drivers from the restricted section of its repository, particularly graphics and WLAN drivers. This allows a PC maker to bundle, say, NVIDIA graphics rather than sticking to Intel integrated graphics, which have historically had less throughput.
Ubuntu offers both a fork of Debian unstable and its own repository of applications in self-contained Snap packages. Though snapd can install Snap packages on other X11/Linux distributions, they're best supported on Ubuntu. Because snapd isolates each application from the rest of the system, it can apply updates transactionally, and it can limit the attack surface associated with running proprietary applications. Some types of software cannot be distributed as free software from day one [pineight.com] because of market realities, particularly games, players for rented movies, and income tax return preparation wizards.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14 2017, @01:37AM
Some types of software cannot be distributed as free software from day one because of market realities, particularly games, players for rented movies, and income tax return preparation wizards.
Then those types of software should not be used until they are free software. If they can't deal with that, then they should disappear from existence. I have absolutely zero sympathy for people who engage in deeply unethical activities just to make money, especially when the 'pragmatic' arguments don't even make sense. I despise this notion that we should ignore ethics in favor of technological, amoral pragmatism.
For tax software, the government should simply develop free software for that purpose; it would benefit everyone more in the long run than freedom-denying proprietary software.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @04:15AM
There is nothing unethical about creating things in exchange for putting food on the table. It is the foundation of every economy and has been since before the invention of money.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday January 24 2017, @04:19AM
For tax software, the government should simply develop free software for that purpose
In a jurisdiction where nearly every legislator of the majority party has signed a "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" to oppose any and all measures that increase the tax rate, where should the government find the money to develop said software?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Saturday January 14 2017, @01:49AM
Snap has some serious issues, its not as clear of an advantage as you might think.
In the long run it will prove unsupportable as packaged drift toward obsolescence and others emerge and you find you can't get rid of any of them because the Snap dependency model is weak and function retarded.
Also, any throughput advantage by Nvidia over Intel is soaked up by the install and upgrade nightmare Nvidia imposed over the life of the machine. EACH such upgrade puts your machine at risk of booting to black screen. How would you like the tech support job of talking to some little old lady in Kentucky through a Nvidia recovery. I've done that and it sucks.
For anything other than gaming, give me a drop dead simple intel graphics card every time.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday January 14 2017, @04:40AM
How would you like the tech support job of talking to some little old lady in Kentucky through a Nvidia recovery. I've done that and it sucks.
Hell, I've done that with my dad looking over my shoulder telling me everything I was doing wrong, when I was the Linux wiz and he was the analog electronics wiz. It sucked.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1) by dr_barnowl on Sunday January 15 2017, @08:08AM
+1, thankfully I set my mother up with SSH plus dynamic DNS for remote support purposes, so when her legacy nvidia driver shims stopped compiling for the new kernels, I could switch her to nouveau remotely. And nouveau had improved enough to be usable.